Chapter 92 - Rebecca’s Second Visit
Rebecca’s attorney asked to review the access records before she answered any questions.
Nora agreed. The visitor log showed Rebecca entering the records room twice on the same afternoon. The first visit lasted eleven minutes. The second lasted less than four.
The file inventory identified the first document she opened: the distribution instruction with my name beside the crossed-out amount. The second file had no title. It was listed only by an archive number.
Rebecca joined the review by video. She looked tired, but she did not try to avoid the screen.
“I went to find the letter Anne wrote to me,” she said.
“Which letter?” Nora asked.
“The one thanking me for helping with the foundation’s donor records. I thought it was in the correspondence box.”
“Did you find it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you open the distribution file?”
Rebecca paused. “I saw the page with Claire’s name.”
“Did you write ‘Hold pending notice’?”
“I don’t remember.”
“That is not the same as saying you didn’t,” I said.
“No,” she replied. “It isn’t.”
Nora asked whether Rebecca had seen the second file. Rebecca said the archive number meant nothing to her, and she did not remember opening it. The system’s access log, however, showed the file had remained active on the screen for nearly three minutes.
“Could you have opened it by accident?” Nora asked.
“I might have.”
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know.”
The accountant had already requested the file from the records administrator. It had not been included in the original production because it was classified as a personal correspondence item.
Rebecca’s attorney objected to releasing it without reviewing its contents. Nora said the file might be central to tracing a beneficiary allocation and the chain of custody. The administrator agreed to preserve it while the parties resolved access.
I looked at Rebecca. “Why didn’t you tell me you saw my name on that page?”
“I didn’t understand what it meant.”
“You knew I was listed as a beneficiary.”
“I knew the reserve had names attached to it. I didn’t know what had been paid or withheld.”
“Then why did you let Charles tell everyone the matter was settled?”
Her expression tightened. “Because he said it was.”
“You believed him.”
“I did.”
“And you didn’t check.”
“No.”
There it was again: a simple answer that could not give me back the years I had spent believing there was nothing to ask.
Rebecca said she had written the note only if the handwriting belonged to her. She wanted to see the original before saying more. Beatrice requested a handwriting comparison, and Nora agreed to have the document examined independently.
After the call, Madison came to the center. She had heard about Rebecca’s second visit and wanted to know what had been discovered.
“She may have opened a file we haven’t seen,” I told her.
Madison sat across from me. “Did she ever take your mother’s letters?”
“Not that I know of.”
“She kept some of them after Mom died. Dad said he gave them to her for safekeeping.”
“Did you see that happen?”
“No. He said it.”
We searched the foundation correspondence box with counsel present. We found several letters from Anne to Rebecca, but none matched the one Rebecca described. One envelope had been removed from its folder and replaced with a blank index card.
The records administrator identified it as the correspondence linked to the second archive number.
“Could the letter have been moved?” I asked.
“Yes,” the administrator said. “The file’s location changed twice.”
“Who moved it?”
The system showed a user account assigned to Charles’s office.
Madison frowned. “Dad had access to the foundation records?”
“His office had access,” Nora corrected. “We need to know who used it.”
An hour later, Beatrice received the handwriting comparison. The note was probably Rebecca’s.
Rebecca called back immediately. “I remember now. Charles asked me to write it.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said the notice was being sent and he didn’t want the allocation released until you had received it.”
“Did I receive it?”
“No.”
Rebecca’s voice broke. “I believed it had been handled.”
Nora asked when Charles gave her that instruction.
Rebecca checked her calendar.
May you like
“After the first letter came back undelivered,” she said. “He told me he’d send another.”
The archive contained no record of a second letter.
